Into town from the chaparral drifted the enemies Clanton had made during his career as a gunman. Yankie and Albeen and Dumont and Bancock moved to and fro in the crowds at the different gambling places and saloons. Even Roush, who in the past three years had never given young Clanton an opportunity to meet him face to face, stole furtively into the tendejons of the Mexican quarter and spent money freely in treating. Among the natives Go-Get-'Em Jim was in ill-repute for shooting a bad man named Juan Ortez who had attempted to terrorize the town while on a spree.
"We're spendin' a lot of good money on this job. We'd ought to pull it off," Dumont whispered to Albeen.
"Whose money?" asked the one-armed man cynically.
It struck him as an ironic jest that the money they had got from the sale of Homer Webb's cattle should be spent to bring about the lynching of the man who had killed him.
Both the sheriff and his deputy were out of town rounding up a half-breed Mexican who had stabbed another at a dance. They reached Live-Oaks with their prisoner about the middle of the afternoon. Lee was waiting for them impatiently at the court-house.
"They're planning to lynch Jim," she told Prince abruptly.
"Who's goin' to do all that?" he asked.
"The riff-raff of the county are back of it, but the worst of it is that they've got a lot of good people in with them. Some of the Flying V Y riders are in town too. I never saw so much drinking before."
"When is it to be?"
"I don't know."